Work Text:
This wasn’t going to turn out well.
The band was participating in their first open mic night at Eats & Beats since Julie had joined, but she didn’t think any of them had expected to see Bobby there.
Or that he’d be performing a Sunset Curve song that Luke wrote.
Julie wanted nothing more than to fold Luke into a hug, to see how he was doing and offer her his support, but then the boys would see and the cat would be out of the bag.
She and Luke had been secretly dating for a month now.
Secretly, because when they’d all had a big falling out with Bobby over Julie’s recent participation in the band, it became obvious that Hannah, Reggie’s girlfriend and Bobby’s little sister, would be siding with her brother on the matter. Reggie and Hannah broke up, and he’d been devastated ever since. Luke and Julie got together the very next day, but they’d agreed not to say anything to any of their friends until it seemed like Reggie was feeling better about the whole thing.
Which hadn’t happened yet.
So Julie had to settle for the most supportive smile she could muster across the table and nudged Luke’s foot with hers. He met her gaze and offered his own tight-lipped grimace in return. She frowned.
What could she do?
“I think we should say something,” Alex determined. He nodded his head to punctuate the sentence, like he was charging himself up for the confrontation that was bound to come. To be fair, he probably was. No one hated confrontation more than Alex Mercer.
‘It’s up to you, Luke. It’s your song. We’ll support you either way.” To stop herself from reaching across the table and squeezing his hand in hers, Julie clutched the icy glass of soda in front of her and took a long drink.
Luke’s answering smile was slightly more genuine than the last.
Okay, progress. She could handle this.
Luke’s head fell into his hands as Bobby butchered the pre chorus, and Julie cringed. She wasn’t sure what Luke would find more upsetting–that Bobby was stealing his song, or that he was doing such a bad job of performing it.
Reggie let out a little choked sound next to her, and Julie’s attention darted straight from Luke to him. He was looking across the restaurant to another dimly lit table in a corner. “Hannah’s here, too,” he mumbled, cheeks turning red as he averted his gaze to the tabletop.
Comforting Reggie Julie could do. She wasn’t scared that any amount of physical contact might out a secret relationship they had. She didn’t hesitate to grab one of his hands in hers. He squeezed back gratefully.
A stilted version of Luke’s favorite guitar solo rang out on the stage.
It seemed to be the last straw.
“Okay, yeah, let’s do it.” Underneath the table, Luke caught Julie’s foot between both of his and squeezed his knees on either side of hers. She nudged back against him in support.
“We’ll be with you the whole time, bud.” Alex clapped a comforting hand against Luke’s shoulder, and then his face scrunched up in a frown. “Okay, maybe right behind you. But I’ll still be moral support!”
And that was okay, because Julie would be right next to him. Hell, she’d be in front of him if he’d let her. She didn’t consider herself to be a violent person, but she had several choice words for both Bobby and Hannah after everything they’d done to hurt the people she cared about. She hated that their first big night together had been overshadowed by such a negatively-charged situation.
Tonight they were supposed to sing Finally Free, the first song Luke and Julie truly considered a joint collaboration, and maybe they’d flirt a little on stage and their new sound and music would soon inspire Reggie enough to feel a little better and they’d tell their friends that they were together and really happy and finally have the support of their loved ones.
It didn’t seem that would be the case, though.
Instead, as Bobby left the stage and Hannah met up with him to leave out the back, Julie found herself standing up out of her chair to support Luke with her bandmates as he sought justice for the music that had been stolen from him. As the band filed out toward the green room in the back, Luke reached out for a moment and squeezed his fingers in a brief pulse against hers before letting go. According to him, the boys had known about his feelings for her long before he’d realized them himself. They wouldn’t question him seeking her out if they noticed.
They didn’t see anything anyway, and Julie was swept into the group of boys as they followed Bobby down the back hallway and out into the alleyway on the side of the building. The smell of trash hit Julie’s senses like a ton of bricks–the alley was grimy and dirty, bags of garbage torn open and strewn about messily around the trash cans and dumpsters lining the wall. This was not a place she wanted to linger for long.
“Hey!” Luke’s voice boomed louder than Julie had expected, and she smacked right into his back as he abruptly stopped as soon as the side door swung shut behind them. Alex and Reggie stood to either side of him, Julie peeking out to the side on her tiptoes to see over Luke’s shoulder.
Bobby and Hannah paused fifteen feet in front of them, turning around at Luke’s prompting. Hannah’s eyes immediately snapped to Reggie’s, and Julie fought the urge to stand in front of him and hide him away from the girl who had broken his heart. He strongly stood his ground, eyes unblinking and unforgiving as he leveled her gaze.
Julie was proud of him for it.
“I think we need to have a conversation. You in the habit of stealing other people’s songs?” Luke stepped forward, a few feet closer to Bobby. Julie instantly longed to go with him.
Bobby stepped a few steps forward too, leaving only a couple measly feet of space between the two boys.
Julie shuffled uneasily on her feet. They’d just moved close enough that this could get physical if they wanted it to. And Luke wasn’t tall by any means, but he was certainly the muscliest person she knew. While she was sure he could hold his own in a fight, she didn’t really want to witness it firsthand. The thought made her heart clench in her chest.
Alex took her hand. It was obvious he was having the same thought.
“Please, Luke. It’s not like you’re gonna break onto the scene anyway. You guys don’t have the connections like I do. No one is ever gonna know about your music. I’m doing you a favor here.” Julie flinched at Bobby’s inflection. Gone was the nice, smart guy she’d come to know from Sunset Curve. His father’s fame had finally gone to his head. He just didn’t have the talent to achieve his father’s greatness on his own.
“Come on, dude. I’d like to see literally any label sign you after they know you’re stealing other artists’ music. I’m not letting you do that,” Luke assured. His voice was even, calm. More level headed than Julie would have assumed for such a conversation. She would’ve thought he’d be a tornado of rage confronting Bobby about stolen music. She was proud of him for maintaining his cool.
Julie could see instantly that Bobby didn’t have the same self-control. His eyes flashed at the threat Luke had issued. This was going to be bad.
In a flash, Julie dropped Alex’s hand and sprung forward to get between the boys. Bobby was about to swing, and she had to protect Luke. She jumped in front of him and held her hands out in front of her defensively. She’d do a terrible job of blocking an actual punch, but she had to try. “Hey! You need to–”
Julie’s involvement seemed to further enrage Bobby. “Of fucking course you try to jump in the middle of it. Stay out of this, Molina!” His hands grabbed onto either of her shoulders and shoved her to the side in a move she wasn’t expecting. Backwards, and she would’ve gone straight into Luke. He would’ve caught her, she was sure. But sideways? Her hands darted out to her sides to stop her as she stumbled, and the next thing she knew she was smacking butt-first into the ground, fiery pain licking up her arms.
She whimpered.
Everything erupted in the alley. She was vaguely aware of Luke’s voice, no longer calm and collected, shouting at Bobby to keep his hands off her. Hannah was yelling at them both to stop, voice an octave higher than usual in fright. Someone knelt down next to her as she lifted her hands from the ground, blood pooling around sparkly glass shards embedded into both her palms, which was apparently the cause of the burning feeling so intense her eyes were watering against it. Just before her vision totally blurred with tears, she had the awareness to note that she’d fallen straight onto a shattered bottle on the ground.
“Shit,” Reggie’s voice was the one next to her as he, too, noted the little spikes of glass in her hand and the blood making its way across her hands and to her wrists. The flannel from his waist was wrapped around her hands as gently as he could, applying as much pressure as he dared to stop the bleeding without pushing glass further into her palms. “You’re okay, Jules. It’s okay.”
She couldn’t help the small cry that escaped, burying her head into his neck while she tried desperately to focus on anything aside from the pain in her hands. Reggie smelled good, like fresh soap and the cologne he always insisted on wearing to gigs. The hand not holding his flannel across both of hers gently petted her hair in a comforting touch. Alex must have knelt behind her as well, an extra hand rubbing soothingly against her back.
“Luke!” she felt Reggie call out as much as she heard it. It gave her another sensation to focus on, feeling the vibrations of his voice in his chest and in his throat as he spoke. Reggie had never done well with blood, though, and his words had a frantic tinge to them that only reminded Julie of the blinding pain she was in. “Luke, Julie’s bleeding. We need to go.”
“What happened?” Luke’s voice was in front of her instantly, calloused fingers drawing her out from Reggie’s neck and swiping at the tears on her cheeks.
“She fell on glass. It’s all in her hands.” Reggie’s voice broke on the last word, gesturing helplessly to the flannel he’d wrapped around her that kept Luke from seeing exactly what was going on across her palms.
“Honey, look at me, please,” Luke’s comforting fingers against her cheeks coaxed Julie’s eyes to open, revealing her boyfriend squatted down in front of her with stormy hazel eyes distraught as they assessed her for any other injury. “Is it just your hands? Is anything else hurting?” His voice sounded much calmer than he looked, evidently trying very hard to soothe her through his own fear.
Julie considered the question. She flexed her limbs one by one, checking herself for any pain beyond the excruciating one in her hands. Even her butt, which had obviously landed in the broken bottle as well, seemed to have been protected enough by her jeans.
She came up empty and shook her head.
“Julie, I–” Bobby’s voice shot up behind Luke’s shoulder, much less angry sounding than it had been when he’d shoved her to the ground a minute ago. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
Julie found it in herself to nod. Bobby was a lot of things, but he’d never intentionally hurt someone this way. She knew that.
“Alex, can you go get the car, please? Let’s get back to the studio and fix her hands.” Luke’s voice maintained its calm and collected demeanor, only selling himself out by his hands still petting at her face while his lips pressed against every bit of her he could reach, as if kissing her would physically remove the pain from her hands.
Julie became idly aware of the fact that this was definitely beyond what Friend Luke would do and that he’d probably just spilled the beans, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care when all she wanted was to drown in every ounce of comfort he could provide. She sniffed back what tears she could, trying to be strong and show them that she was okay. It was just some glass in her hands–she could handle this.
Reggie let go of her wrapped hands just for Luke to hold onto the flannel in his place, and then Reggie’s hands slid under her armpits to help her stand. Under different circumstances, she would’ve been embarrassed at the feeling of Reggie’s hands dusting her butt off and checking it clinically for any signs of remaining glass, but she let herself snuggle into Luke’s chest instead and be calmed by the comforting warmth she found in his arms.
Neither Alex nor Reggie questioned it when Luke slid into the backseat with Julie, holding her close and kissing her and whispering comforting words the whole way back to her house. If it freaked him out when a patch of bright red blood seeped through the muted tones of Reggie’s flannel, he didn’t let it show.
Back at the studio, Luke held her the whole time Alex unwrapped her hands and used a lamp and a set of tweezers to pluck all the bits of glass out of her palms. It was only after all the sparkly bits were removed from her hands and the remaining injuries had been cleaned and bandaged that somebody finally said something.
“Sooo, when were you two planning to tell us that you’d finally gotten together?” It was Reggie who finally asked, arms crossed and feet propped against the coffee table in front of him as he gazed at Luke and Julie cuddled together on the couch.
Luke froze in silence, like the idea that their jig was up hadn’t even crossed his mind.
The room drowned in awkward tension.
Finally, to break it, Julie swung her head toward Luke in a mock-surprised expression. “Wait, do you have feelings for me or something?”
Luke leveled her with an unamused expression. “You’re so hilarious. I’m dating a professional comedian.”
Julie stretched up to land a kiss against the sharp edge of his jaw, and all was forgiven. His arm tucked her more securely into his side, both her bandaged hands cradled tenderly in his lap. “A few weeks,” she finally admitted, flinching slightly at the betrayed look both the boys gave her. “I’m sorry. It happened right after the whole Bobby thing, and it just felt mean to rub our relationship in when Reggie was having such a hard time.”
Reggie snorted. “You are both idiots. Just because I’m in my own lovelife turmoil doesn’t mean I can’t be happy that my two best friends finally got their shit together. Honestly, we were starting to think Luke was just going to let somebody else ask you to prom.”
Luke’s squawk of indignation told the room exactly what he thought of that idea. “I would’ve told her by then,” he grumbled, his fingers twining and untwining with hers in his lap. He was ever-careful not to jostle the bandages across her palms.
“I was pretty sure it had happened,” Alex admitted. “You two got super weird all of a sudden. Newsflash: you guys suddenly not touching at all around us was way weirder than you thought it would be. Dead giveaway.”
Luke and Julie wore twin sheepish expressions. “Oops.”
Julie turned her attention to Luke. “What are we going to do about Bobby? Do you think he’s going to keep stealing your songs?”
Luke shook his head instantly, like he’d already thought about it and decided the idea held no merit. He tugged one of her hands up to plant kisses against her fingers. “Nah, I think he scared himself shitless when he hurt you. He’s not going to cross us again.”
Despite the obvious negatives of the evening, Julie was incredibly thankful for two unintended outcomes: that Luke’s music was safe, and they no longer held a secret from their two best friends.
She’d file it down as a win in her book.